2.11. Japanese Alphabet: Hiragana: Verbs and Conjugation

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The Japanese alphabet is a complex and fascinating writing system, made up of three sets of characters: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. In this chapter, we're going to focus specifically on Hiragana, which is the first set of characters that Japanese learners usually learn. In addition, we will cover the topic of verbs and their conjugations, which is an essential part of learning the language.

Hiragana is one of the three writing systems used in Japan. It is a syllabic system, which means that each character represents a complete syllable, as opposed to an alphabetic system, where each letter represents a sound. Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words, grammatical particles, words without a common kanji form, and also to write furigana, which are small hiragana characters used to indicate the pronunciation of a kanji character.

There are 46 basic characters in Hiragana, each representing a single syllable. In addition, there are additional characters that represent elongated vowel sounds and syllable combinations. The writing in Hiragana is fluid and curvy, which makes it very different from the Latin script we are used to.

When it comes to verbs, Japanese is a highly inflectional language. This means that the form of a verb can change to indicate tense, aspect, mood, voice and other grammatical aspects. There are three main classes of verbs in Japanese: group I verbs, group II verbs, and irregular verbs.

Group I verbs are the most common and are often called "u" verbs. This is because the ending of these verbs, when written in hiragana, usually ends with one of the following characters: う, く, ぐ, す, つ, ぬ, ふ, む, る. To conjugate a group I verb to the present tense, you simply replace the "u" ending with an "i" ending. For example, the verb "to write" is "kaku" (かく) in its base form, but becomes "kaki" (かき) in the present tense.

Group II verbs are a little less common and are often called "ru" verbs. These verbs always end with the る character when written in hiragana. To conjugate a group II verb to the present tense, you simply remove the る ending and add ます. For example, the verb "to eat" is "taberu" (たべる) in its base form, but it becomes "tabemasu" (たべます) in the present tense.

Finally, we have the irregular verbs, which are the least common but also the most important to learn, as they include some of the most commonly used verbs in the language, such as "come" and "do". These verbs don't follow the regular conjugation rules and simply need to be memorized.

In summary, the Hiragana alphabet and verb conjugation are fundamental parts of learning Japanese. While it may seem challenging at first, with continued practice and study, you'll become more and more comfortable with these concepts and be well on your way to becoming fluent in Japanese.

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142.12. Japanese Alphabet: Hiragana: Sentence Formation